Akio had no idea how far his latest space jump had taken him, but one thing was certain: although his overall power hadn't increased much, his ability to survive had improved dramatically.
In the current ninja world, there weren't many who could truly threaten him but still, if something unexpected happened, like the Sage of Six Paths going insane or Kaguya suddenly breaking free again… well, even if he couldn't win, at least he could run.
"Everything the system makes is top-quality," Akio muttered, both impressed and relieved. He had thought that having a space like Obito's Kamui Dimension would already be incredible, but his own even came with built-in space-jumping capability.
Thinking about all those densely packed nodes within the dimension, he almost burst out laughing. With this, he really was like Mundo incarnate, he could go wherever he pleased.
Returning to the moment, he finally looked around at his surroundings.
"Snow and ice… the Land of Iron? Or maybe the Land of Snow?" he murmured, planning to take to the air and scout around.
But the instant he activated chakra, he was sucked right back into his personal space. Glancing at the fat cat still snoring nearby, Akio blinked in confusion.
"Is this space too sensitive? I just gathered a bit of chakra, and it yanked me back in?"
He sensed around the space, locating the nodes again. "Well, at least this makes getting back faster. I was over there just now… let's try that direction."
He jumped again only to instantly return to the space. The last thing he saw outside was the ocean below him.
"Ocean, huh… then maybe that direction…"
"…Or maybe this one…"
"…No, what about here—"
After countless attempts, Akio was on the verge of tears.
Everywhere he appeared was remote; dense forests, deserted mountains, empty wilderness. He spread his sensory perception to its limit and didn't detect a single chakra signature.
"So every node leads somewhere uninhabited? I mean, that does save me from the embarrassment of popping up in the middle of a crowd, but how am I supposed to tell where anything is?"
Looking around, he studied the environment more carefully. "Judging from the climate, this should still be within the Land of Fire. Konoha should be southeast from here."
He took a few steps forward, then sighed deeply.
"Am I really going to have to walk all the way there? I can't use chakra freely, or I'll get sucked back into the space again… If that happens mid-trip, I'll just end up running in circles!"
Determined to figure it out, Akio returned to the space, this time bringing along a branch. He stood at the center of the Eight Trigrams seal, pointing the branch in a set direction.
"It's time to use my ultimate technique! With the Eight Trigrams at the origin point and this branch as the x-axis, I'll build a three-dimensional coordinate grid: x, y, z, and test each node systematically using gamma equations… Yeah, one at a time! I refuse to believe there's no way to exit from where I entered."
Half a day later, Akio had tested roughly a quarter of the nodes and memorized their general destinations; mountains, oceans, forests all desolate.
"The system's considerate, I'll give it that. At least I won't randomly drop into a women's bathhouse… though, well, that wouldn't be the worst outcome," he muttered, though his expression betrayed disappointment rather than relief.
"Anyway, onward! The light of victory is near!"
He looked down at his directional branch and his face darkened instantly.
"Fat Cat, I'm going to strangle you!"
At some point, the cat had woken up and was happily batting at the branch with its paw.
When it heard Akio's voice, it trotted over, rubbing affectionately against his leg to demand food.
Akio sighed helplessly. "I swear, I raised an ancestor instead of a pet."
After a moment's thought, he replaced the branch with an entire tree no way Fat Cat could move that.
"Let's continue."
Two full days later, he was staring at the final node, completely speechless.
"My luck… it really had to be the last one, huh?"
Pouring chakra into the node, Akio appeared in a vast desert.
"A desert? That's… new." He blinked in surprise.
"So there really isn't a node that returns me to the starting point, huh."
He realized that if he re-entered the space and used the same node again, he could reappear here, but that didn't help much.
"If that's the case, this space-time technique is basically just an escape tool. A glorified Vortex Run… that's not acceptable."
Suddenly, he sensed a large number of chakra signatures in the distance, strong ones. Among them was Chiyo's familiar presence.
"Sand shinobi forces… heading toward the Land of Rain? So Sunagakure really did make their move." Akio frowned, considering whether to follow.
But the moment he gathered chakra, he was yanked right back into the space again.
He sighed heavily. "There it goes again."
Instead of trying to jump out, he sat down to think.
"There's no way this ability is that useless. The future me didn't have this issue it must be that I'm missing something."
He calmed his mind and replayed every detail since acquiring the ability.
"Every time I enter the space, it's like I'm being drawn into myself… Could this space actually be inside my body?"
Focusing inward, he finally sensed an anomaly.
"This spot… the Gate of Shock?"
After some testing, Akio could only laugh wryly. "So it really is inside my own Gate of Shock."
"In other words, Obito's space-time jutsu sends him into his eye, while mine connects to one of the Eight Gates? Which means… there are eight spaces total!"
Injecting chakra into the Gate of Shock, he vanished and reappeared instantly in the same desert.
He didn't even care that he might have permanently sealed that gate. For now, relief washed over him.
"As long as I can exit where I entered, that's all that matters."
The Sand shinobi forces had already moved beyond his sensory range, and he didn't bother chasing them. Without stable chakra control, he'd never catch up anyway.
"Better to focus on mastering this space-time technique first. I need to be able to manipulate chakra freely inside and outside the dimension."
After pondering for a bit, Akio sighed.
"One step at a time. System products are top-tier, sure but adapting to sudden power spikes is always a pain."
It had taken him two whole years to polish his five elemental attributes to level eight, and even longer to perfect his craft techniques afterward.
Now, this new spatial power was something he'd never touched before, and mastering it wouldn't happen overnight.
Still, he wasn't too worried. Konoha was strong, Uzushiogakure was safe, and no one in their right mind would dare provoke them now. Spending a few weeks adapting wasn't a big deal.
Yet the ability turned out to be even harder to control than he expected. It took him nearly an entire month before he finally, shakily, managed to fly close to Konoha.
As he looked out at the village gates from afar, emotion welled up in his chest.
"For the first time," Akio murmured, voice trembling, "I've realized just how far Uzushiogakure really is from Konoha…"
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